


Pornogamy

by mzhlf



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Love at First Sight, unapologetic sin with a touch of surrealism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-12 15:24:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11164683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mzhlf/pseuds/mzhlf
Summary: Bare yourself to a beautiful stranger and entrust them with your heart. Leap into the abyss and savor the fall in every synapse, with every thought. Make love. No second guessing. No pretense of sensibility. No performative detachment acquired from one too many hurts.Can you do it?





	Pornogamy

**Author's Note:**

> Sooo here's an attempt at sin? And also at a weird sort of disconcerting, semi-unrealistic parallel universe concept that I'm not sure I pulled off very well? Would appreciate suggestions and con-crit.
> 
> A very special thanks to my wonderful beta-reader, whoeverdares. You are amazing.
> 
> The title was strongly inspired by lyrics from Client - Pornography.

Alex comes home to a nude stranger draped across her couch.

Now in normal situations, getting a surprise eyeful usually comes with a dose of annoyance or embarrassment, like when bathroom doors don't lock properly, or roommates are indiscrete, or ads pop up on sketchy websites. If we want to be morbidly imaginative, we might also think of trenchcoat-wearers with terrible moral judgment, or that dramatically grotesque camera cut to a gaping corpse, right before the poor woman who finds the body broadcasts her location to the killer by screaming her lungs out.

The person on Alex’s couch is not a corpse, thankfully. There is movement to her eyelids. Her chest rises and falls.

Nor is she sleeping or confused. Lucid gray eyes meet hers through the doorway from a symmetrical face with no discernible expression.

Alex cocks her head, eyebrows drawing together, mouth falling open just a tad, a little bit impressed by the sheer gall of it.

There she lays like it’s the most natural thing in the world, elbow on the armrest, head propped on her palm, thick waves of hair falling gently over her shoulders, backlit by the soft sunlight filtering through the curtains like a classical painting.

Her hair is, quite notably, not a solid color. But you knew that already, didn’t you?

Here’s what you don’t know, and might be asking:

If they are truly strangers, then what’s this woman doing in Alex’s home all by herself, naked on the couch no less? Burglars don’t go to the trouble of disrobing. Serial killers don’t lounge about in plain sight, giving their targets ample opportunity to run away.

And even if we give her the benefit of the doubt, we’re still left with numerous missing pieces. Did she pick the lock or fly in through a window? Was she nude upon arrival, or did she undress herself within the privacy of walls and a locked door? How much does she know about Alex Danvers? Did she watch her for weeks, observing and fantasizing or was this more of an impulse thing?

And what about Alex? Where is she returning from and how is she feeling? Is she absolutely itching for a wineglass after a long, stressful day? Does she live alone? Is she lonely?

If you’re conscientious, you might be thinking, well wait a minute, isn’t this poker-faced nude being just a little bit presumptuous? Alex never consented to finding her like this. If she’s a creepy stalker, well then, shame on her. And if she isn’t, then for all she knows, Alex might just be stopping in briefly. She might already have other plans. Her sister might have roped her into grimacing through kombucha with her obscenely rich CEO friend. There might be a movie ticket in her pocket to see the latest 007 with Gillian Anderson as the new Bond. She might just be grabbing a forgotten wallet - we didn’t specify how long she’d been gone; it could have been five hours, or it could have been five minutes.

By all rights, Alex should be outraged. She should be furious.

It is an outlandishly invasive thing to do, a flagrant violation of social protocol. Lesson number one in etiquette school: don’t break into a stranger’s apartment and wait for them on their couch without any clothes on.

Alex should slam the door shut, run away, call the police, and punch her in that wholesomely beautiful face if she tried to follow her outside.

Okay, maybe not in the face. And -  _ oh, Jesus _ \- maybe not anywhere else either. There’s not really any visible part of her she’d want to - well, not in a violent capacity anyway -

Anyway, that’s beside the point. All that time watching over Kara has made her shrewd and cautious, entrusting little to the whims of fate. What was it that she said to Kara only a few days ago?  _ If he doesn’t respect you now, what makes you think he ever would? _

Now that, that is some excellent wisdom. That’s something someone sensible would say. Alex likes to think that she’s sensible. And god, she should  _ really _ take her own advice, because what’s more disrespectful than this?

But the more time she spends standing in the doorway, violating a few social protocols herself by not immediately looking away, the more tired she gets of all these shoulds.

There’s just something about her demeanor that captivates. She has the eyes of a wanderer, someone who has witnessed profound beauty and immense tragedy. Someone who has bled upon the shores of distant oceans, greeted the light of a billion sunrises. And Alex would think about her, perhaps even yearn for her, if she pushed her away.

What if… what if everything is fine? What if this is exactly where they’re supposed to be?

What if Alex isn’t actually supposed to fight this instinct? What if she just… gives in to it?

What if she musters up just a little bit of faith, and a little bit of courage?

Alex doesn’t scream. She doesn’t run away. She doesn’t call the police. She doesn’t reach for the nearest object that might serve as a weapon.

Feet move forward one step, and then another. A hand closes the door behind her. Fingers grasp the cool metal latch and turn until it clicks.

The stranger makes no move to rise from the couch, offers no gesture, utters no sound. She certainly doesn’t seem to lack for confidence, never once looking away, or showing any sign of apprehension or self-consciousness.

Upon closer examination, her relaxed demeanor seems to be a careful ruse. Anticipation is written in every lean, graceful line of her body, a glimmer of something hopeful and vulnerable in her face, but her complete lack of movement suggests, at the very least, a lack of aggression. This is not a request and not a demand, but an offer.

What happens next is entirely up to Alex.

And Alex… Alex has already made up her mind. It’s not that she isn't at least vaguely aware of the stupidity, the impulsivity of this choice. But in her heart, it doesn’t feel like a choice at all, but a consequence. An inevitability.

For now, words are useless between them. Details would only weigh them down, distract them from what they feel. There will be plenty of time for that later.

But this stranger is too important not to have a name. Alex will want to know everything there is to know about her at some point... but a name will do for now.

There's a pesky urge to start out with a quip -  _ So! Come here often?  _ \- just… a little something to diffuse this almost unbearable intensity between them.

But the words never form because she doesn’t particularly  _ want _ to diffuse it. Instead, she exhales and her eyes flutter closed for just a brief moment.

“God you’re stunning,” Alex breathes, heat prickling up her neck, and the woman’s lips slowly spreads into grin that reaches deep into her eyes. It’s open and warm and Alex is all the more mesmerized.

“Thank you,” she says, her smile softening into a sort of honest desire that makes the warmth in Alex’s chest flutter lower. “So are you.”

It takes a conscious effort to resist averting her eyes. “I’m Alex.”

“Astra,” comes the simple response, and  _ oh _ , Alex wants to cocoon herself in the texture of her voice.

“ _ Astra _ ,” Alex echoes softly, just to taste the syllables against her tongue and Astra smolders as if she had breathed it directly into her ear. Her gaze darkens with lust, pupils expanding ever so slightly.  _ God _ , she’s captivating.

Alex wants to lay beside her. Wants to wrap that white streak of hair around her fingers. Wants to learn everything about her. Wants to know her intimately.

There’s little question now as to why Astra is here, and that knowledge produces a tender ache below her stomach. And as if the dawning realization that she’s actually about to give herself to someone she just barely met finally jumpstarts her brain again, the prudent, sensible part of her has one last hurrah.

Because Astra could be anyone, for all Alex knows. She could be capable of anything. And turning up in a stranger’s apartment naked doesn’t usually imply great things about one’s social judgment or impulse control. Alex may very well be the hundredth stranger she’s done this to.

Oh, but there’s that attraction again, if it could even be called that anymore. It seems too mundane a word. To be fair, she could go on for eons about how Astra looks like something out of a magazine, how her legs stretch on for lightyears, how her impressive musculature underlies her feminine softness. She could wax poetic about her sharp cheekbones, her graceful neck, the soft vertical line that bisects her toned stomach. And while it’s true, Astra is gorgeous, none of this is what holds Alex’s focus.

Maybe the sunrises in her eyes are just a clever bait for more notches in her belt, but wouldn’t it be better to find out through experience than to spend night after night wondering and regretting?

God, try as she might, Alex can’t talk herself out of it. Everything she knows to be logical and sensible just seems so artificial and rehearsed. Weightless, when faced with the inevitable. Trying to stop this is like trying to stop a rainstorm.

And so, she surrenders, and allows that insurmountable sense of inevitability to push her forward step by step, bolstered by Astra gazing at her, burning for her, but never wavering in her stillness, in her patience.

Old wounds scatter like shooting stars across Astra’s body. Alex reaches out to touch one, a pinkish and diamond-shaped scar on her bicep, wondering what it feels like, but pauses several inches away. “May I?” she asks.

“Please,” Astra says.

Alex presses her fingers to it, traces over that blemish, and Astra’s skin feels unexpectedly warm as she memorizes its irregular edges. Her feet shift on the hardwood floor and she bends down to gently kiss it. There’s a slight hitch in Astra’s breath and goosebumps rise to meet her fingertips. The back of the couch creaks where pale-knuckled fingers are gripping it.

Alex moves on to an almost identical scar, several inches below the previous, a matching pair. She examines it closely, running her thumb over it. Such an unusually shaped mark would fascinate on its own, but give it a twin, and it’s almost artistic. Goosebumps rise as Alex unwittingly breathes on it. Astra trembles with the barest of shudders, and Alex can’t resist pressing a kiss to this one as well.

A curving row of small, discolored marks on the outside of her wrist, as if something had bitten her. Alex suckles lightly along it. Astra’s fingers twitch as if barely containing the urge to caress her face.

It’s both odd and endearing, this display of self restraint. She offers herself completely and unambiguously, while allowing Alex move at her own pace. Or perhaps she’s waiting for something equally unambiguous. Maybe it’s even her way of apologizing for her incredible degree of unambiguousness.

Alex takes her time paying reverence to each storied imperfection, each victory and loss, each brave deed, each painful memory.

A jagged old burn mark at her hip which she smooths with her thumb and takes her time tasting with the tip of her tongue.

A clean, raised line on the outside of her thigh which she drags her lips against.

A reddish, almond-shaped patch on the back of her knee which she gently bites - oooh, is that a huff of stifled laughter? Alex glances up at Astra deviously from beneath her eyebrows and files that bit of knowledge away for future use. Astra tries to look stern, but the effect is lost next to her unraveling composure.

Two short, parallel lines where ankle meets foot that Alex kisses chastely, one after the other.

An old, puckered bullet wound nestled into the fleshy part of her calf that she swirls her tongue around - Astra practically  _ bucks _ in response, a strangled groan penetrating Alex’s eardrums and sticking to her brain like nectar.

A long knife wound running down her inner thigh which Alex trails chaste yet deliberate kisses along, starting from the bottom and working her way up. Toned stomach muscles tense with each deliberate press of lips against warm, warm skin. Alex fights the urge to deviate from her path, because stifled moans and goose flesh is one thing, but seeing  _ evidence _ of her enjoyment up close is quite another.

Alex tears her eyes away with an intake of breath, the heated prickle of a flush creeping up her neck to settle in her cheeks. She risks a glance upward and shivers at how Astra is devouring her with her eyes, like she knows  _ exactly _ what Alex was just looking at, like she wants to crawl into Alex’s skin and brand herself into every square inch of her body.

Alex braces her hand against the couch and holds her eyes steady as she brushes her lips over a v-shaped scar that almost touches a stiffened areola.

She traces her fingers up the middle of Astra’s sternum over yet another one, raised and red, deeper and crueler than all the others. She can’t bear to look at it, not with those shallow breaths trembling beneath her mouth, not when Astra must have come so close to dying.

A strange melancholy seeps into her heart at the thought that she could have lived in a world without Astra, that this moment might easily have never happened. So she lifts her body up onto the edge of the couch and carefully lays down next to her, fully clothed.

She doesn’t even think to leave any space between them, just slips her arm behind Astra’s shoulder blades and draws her close. Astra’s body heat burns her through her shirt.

“Thank you for coming back to me,” she utters against Astra’s cheek. There is no logical proof that they’ve known each other any longer than a handful of minutes, and yet this is not a meeting of strangers, but a long-awaited return.

And maybe that is exactly what Astra had been waiting for, that implication, that acknowledgement, because Alex feels her loosen and shift. She leans into Alex’s embrace, her hand pressing against the small of Alex’s back, her eyelashes slightly moist against Alex’s cheek. She turns her head just enough for their lips to touch. The sensation is soft sunshine.

For one electrifying moment, like time itself has frozen solid around them, neither of them move.

There’s a tension in Astra’s body that seeps out toward Alex. A bullet gentle. A viper charmed.

And then Alex tilts her head, slips her hand over Astra’s bare shoulder and pushes their mouths more firmly together, applying the slightest amount of suction. Astra shifts closer, adjusting the angle of her body so that they can kiss without impediment. Her hand traces up Alex’s spine to rake through her hair. Astra’s thighs part to intertwine with hers and they let gravity do the rest, leaving no gap unfilled. The tips of their tongues brush together and they share a trembling sigh.

Like an electrical spark tearing through gunpowder, they go from zero to eleven in seconds. Mouths crushing, tongues dragging together, torsos seeking friction, hands, hips and limbs grappling for connection.

Alex shoves Astra back, blunt fingernails digging into her bare shoulder, elbow pushing against the couch to climb on top, but Astra doesn’t allow the distance. Pulls her forward like a rag doll, hand fisting in her black, button-up blouse. Plastic resin buttons scatter wildly across the room, ricocheting off of the nearby glass coffee table, bouncing and rolling on the wooden floor. Her strength is inhuman, Alex realizes this distantly. but she is beyond feeling afraid. Astra’s teeth dig bruises into her neck as she sucks against her pulse. Hasty fingers fumble with the clasp of Alex bra before giving up and ripping it cleanly off of her. Clean, ironed fabric shoved none-too-gently down her shoulders - Alex reluctantly tears her hands away from Astra to take it off completely.

“ _ Fuck _ ,” she gasps as warm, wet lips encircle one of her exposed nipples while her arms are busy behind her.

Astra uses Alex’s distraction to throw her on her back. Her head bounces against the armrest hard enough to see stars, but it hardly even registers. Astra licks indelicately from the side of her neck to her cheek and breathes harshly into her ear.

“Tell me you want me.” A fierce shudder wracks Alex’s body at her low entreaty. “Tell me you’re mine. Tell me I’m not alone in this.”

“I’m yours,” Alex gasps out, grasping at Astra’s shoulders, the back of her neck, her heel digging into Astra’s calf. “Even if we - even if we never met, even if you never existed, I’d want nothing, nothing more than you.”

Astra’s touch becomes even more emboldened, hands fumbling downward, her whole body shifting with it like she’s weightless.

The top button of Alex’s pants embeds itself into a nearby wall. She lifts her hips, blunt fingernails moving over Astra’s scalp as Astra peels off her thin, tailored trousers, nails raking over her thighs hard enough to leave eight long, perfect welts, massacring her utilitarian boy-briefs as she pulls them down with it.

There might be a fleeting twinge of embarrassment that she hadn’t exactly dressed for the occasion but none of that matters because Astra’s mouth presses wet and hot against that hollow ache between her naked, open thighs.

Alex arches, writhes, tastes blood where she’s broken the skin on the inside of her lip. A palm splays against her hips, effortlessly keeping her still. Astra’s movements are unhurried, experimental, command in every touch. It might have been Alex who mapped out her scars and slipped in next to her, but Astra could never really be subdued. And really, Alex has no interest in controlling, merely witnessing.

Astra’s tongue wanders from her center upward before she slowly, gently folds her lips around her clit. Pleasure burns white behind Alex’s eyelids. The tips of Astra’s index and middle fingers push against her entrance with just the barest amount of pressure - Alex tries to buck into it, but Astra holds her still, lifts herself up. Forces her to make eye-contact as she slowly, slickly sinks into her.

Alex doesn’t last more than a few minutes. She’d been embarrassingly ready ever since she first glimpsed Astra through the doorway. This is why Astra was waiting for her on the couch, why Alex couldn’t fight or run away. They’re meant to know, to touch, to consume each other, wrapped up in each other with the universe as their cocoon.

The edge of blissful oblivion comes rushing toward her like the ground after freefall.

She squeezes her eyes shut, nails digging into impenetrable skin, bracing for the collision. Her body tenses beneath Astra’s hand. Her thighs clench around Astra’s head. Her throat hurts, she practically weeps from the intensity of it. It feels, in a way, like the immediate aftermath of a car wreck. Once the world stops spinning and you’re no longer being jostled between a cacophony of airbags, that strange, fleeting, floating euphoria.

When her senses return, there’s no stiffness in her knees, no contusions across her torso, no gutted machinery smell assaulting her nostrils. Just Astra, kissing her softly, brushing her hair back with her fingers, gazing at her like she’s the one with comets shooting across her irises.

They share her taste on Astra’s tongue. Astra intertwines their legs together again, shifts her weight forward so that nothing separates them but miles and miles of bare skin. It’s first full contact between them, this naked embrace. They lose themselves in the soft, tangible mystery of each other.

Hands wander ambitiously. Teeth rake over swollen lips. Alex lightly traces her fingernails over the sides of Astra’s breasts. Astra caresses those raised welts on her thighs with the same fingers that made them, and they melt possessively into one another. There’s an irresistible heat against her inner thigh where Astra grinds down on her and Alex slips a hand between them to seek it out, palm traversing the toned plane of Astra’s stomach. Fingertips gliding over the swell of her pubic bone, spreading slightly as they reach their target.

Alex's breath falters in her straining lungs.

Astra, swollen stiff between her fingers, Astra’s hips stuttering into that tentative touch, grey eyes rendered black with lust, lips falling open as Alex strokes her slowly, and then gradually picks up the pace. Alex transitions the task to her thumb, stares transfixed as her index and middle fingers reach down even further, curling upward, stroking in lazy circles just barely starting to reach in…

But not quite giving her enough pressure, not just yet.

Let it be known that Alex Danvers is not above some friendly revenge.

Astra follows her movements uselessly with her hips. Alex smirks recklessly across at Astra’s frustration, before removing her fingers entirely. Holds her gaze fiercely as she raises them to her mouth and  _ sucks _ .

The taste is neither pleasant or unpleasant, objectively speaking - but the knowledge of where it came from, the memory of that slickness against her hand, has Alex moaning softly around it. The noise that falls from Astra is somewhere between a groan and a whimper, though her eyes gleam with dark promise. Alex is playing with fire, a little power-drunk on the effect she has on her - something she’d undoubtedly pay for. But she wants her too much to wait for long.

She shifts onto her knees, trailing wet, open-mouthed kisses down, down and down. Astra’s thighs open with a nudge from Alex’s hands.

And if tasting Astra against her fingers was heavenly, it is absolutely nothing compared to drinking from the source. And teasing her wickedly was nothing compared to gently, gently pushing in.

The sounds Astra makes almost completely strip her of focus. Her eyes want to flutter shut at the sensation of Astra wrapped around her, drawing her deeper with each stroke.

She smoothes the flat of her tongue against that tightened bundle of nerves, suckles it as Astra surges into the contact. Her hand strokes slowly, palm twisting upward, wrist flexing as her fingers curl. She lets Astra set the pace, allows her to rock up against her lips and tongue, moves with her while offering just a bit of resistance. Moans into swollen, tightening flesh as Astra cries out her pleasure in a foreign tongue both harsh and beautiful. And trembling from within Astra’s skin, all the force of a supervolcanic eruption. The back of the couch crumbles in Astra’s hand like cardboard, but the fingers stroking Alex’s face are almost reverent. Sunlight falls across her face through the curtains, illuminates her eyelashes like fine, golden needles.

Alex marvels at her deistic power, bathes in her divinity.

It starts from somewhere between Alex’s mouth and her fingers. A steady acceleration, motions growing messier and more unsteady and then a sudden and violent stillness. Bundled nerves twitch and throb between Alex’s lips, and the force of it ripples outward. She clenches around Alex’s fingers. Tendons standing out in her legs and in her neck, toes wrecking the armrest, lungs seizing with a choked cry, and Alex watches, enraptured and miraculously intact at the epicenter.

In the calm that follows, Astra slumps back and pulls Alex up to her. Alex presses tender kisses into her shoulder and neck, gently extricates her fingers and wraps Astra up in a fierce embrace.

It’s the most exquisite thing Alex has ever experienced. She reels from it, swinging unhinged in its wake. She squeezes her eyes shut as she pants against Astra’s collarbone, wanting to relive it over and over again in her mind.

And Astra is 1) apparently insatiable and 2) needs freakishly little in way of recovery time. 

This is an excellent thing to know.

It couldn't have been more than two minutes, and the only warning Alex receives is her back hitting the couch with enough force to whip her hair into her eyes and knock the wind out of her. A steel-gripped hand on her thigh, Astra gazing darkly down at her, enamored and possessive. Good god. Her legs feel like rubber and she doesn't think she can, but the rest of her body vehemently disagrees.

Astra weighs her down with hips, displaces Alex’s leg from the edge of the couch. Alex’s foot fumbles for purchase against the cool glass of the coffee table. The new position opens her so wide that her thighs burn with the effort of maintaining it. Alex has never really thought of herself as someone who gets off on a bit of pain, or for that matter, someone this sexually ambitious, but fucking Astra is a bit like standing alone with your arms outstretched in the eye of a hurricane. It doesn't share those silly human sensibilities about when it makes sense to stop. It simply runs its course. And Alex could resist, could push away, and Astra would certainly restrain herself at her behest. But recklessly, greedily, she wants every last part of it, even if it’s beyond her body’s capacity to withstand. She squeezes her hands around Astra’s forearms and barely has time to brace herself before Astra lines them up and sets a blistering pace.

And any imagined metaphor to natural phenomena is utterly consumed by heat and slickness and friction. Alex’s body takes over on her behalf, reacting to Astra out of pure, carnal instinct. Alex surrenders herself completely to a higher force, because surely she doesn’t have the presence of mind to command her hands to caress the firm lines of Astra’s thighs. Surely hers couldn’t be one of those keening, breathless voices intermingling with the soft sounds of their bodies joining together. Surely those are not her regular human hips meeting Astra thrust for thrust in that slightly off-beat rhythm. Surely she’s not the one turning her head to kiss the fleshy part of Astra’s thumb or teasingly sucking it into her mouth.

She has little control over the words that come tumbling from the deepest corners of her heart. Any semblance of a filter has been fucked clean out of her and all that’s left is the honest, unedited truth.

With the curtains drawn and their eyes blind to all but each other, time is a distant concept. The hours march on elsewhere, leaving them alone in their own little bubble.

They lay on the tattered couch, side by side with their heads together.

They trace their hands along limbs and across the planes of torsos, not to seduce but to admire.

They take each other in the shower, kiss lazily until the water is too cold for Alex to tolerate.

They walk into Alex’s bedroom with Astra trailing behind her, rubbing at her shivering shoulders with her warm hands. They lay curled up together, watching as the night brightens into dawn. Neither of them can stop looking at each other long enough to fall asleep.

A bright thread of adoring playfulness weaves through them. Hands not-quite-accidentally brushing up along ticklish spots. Definitely-not-accidentally attacking those same spots when Astra bites the inside of her cheek to avoid giving Alex the satisfaction. Tectonic plates shifting behind Alex’s ribcage when Astra laughs loudly and artlessly, and defends herself by capturing Alex’s wrists and holding them hostage above her head until Alex agrees to the terms of an hilariously official-sounding treatise, stealing kiss after kiss from her in the meantime.

Astra touches the purple and red marks littered across Alex’s back. “You bruise very easily,” she remarks.

Alex twists her head to the side to grin at her. “If it’s for a good cause, I'm not gonna complain.”

“And is it?” Astra says it like she’s joking, but there's that vulnerability she carries with her like an old wound, this one buried far beneath the surface where Alex’s kisses can’t reach.

“Always,” she insists, shifting to pull their lips together once more.

Even after all this, desire thrums just beneath the surface, underlying their every touch and every glance. Astra wraps her arms around Alex’s waist and pulls her above her as their kisses gradually deepen and they lose themselves in each other again.

Eventually, they try to sleep, tangled together in the middle of the bed... though their wandering hands soon have other ideas.

Eventually, they stop touching one another to take another shower - separately, though Alex pouts about it.

Eventually, they get banned from the Chinese buffet down the street for belaboring their cooks and almost driving them out of business.

Eventually, Alex puts on a lab coat and Astra flies off to conduct some business - nothing nefarious, of course.

They never part ways for long.

Bare yourself to a beautiful stranger and entrust them with your heart. Leap into the abyss and savor the fall in every synapse, with every thought. Make love. No second guessing. No pretense of sensibility. No performative detachment acquired from one too many hurts.

Can you do it? Do you believe that anyone can? Is it too fantastical to trust? Too pornographic to accept as anything close to reality?

Do you want it to be even more pornographic? You’re perfectly welcome to imagine more sex - and why stop at just the vanilla stuff? Leather suits, swimming pools, sex toys, public nudity - by all means, include it all. Anything is possible. Details are irrelevant.

Here’s what matters:

When they finally do talk, they discover that they are well-matched in intellect and interests. Alex kisses Astra’s scars all the more tenderly after learning the origins of each. Even when they disagree - and sometimes they disagree quite passionately - they never once doubt their profound connection.

At least once, this is exactly how it happens, for surely among the universe’s infinite iterations, there must be at least one that takes pity on soulmates strewn lifetimes and civilizations apart.

In another life, they meet at the frontlines of a battlefield as enemies. And when they finally do ally, it’s not with each other, but with a loved one they happen to share. They one-up each other in mission briefings and sparring sessions, and even after any genuine animosity is long forgotten, they mask their mutual admiration behind a veneer of competition. They feign nonchalance in consideration of other obligations. They lean on either side of a closed door, each hoping for the other to swallow her pride. And they sit side by side on the same couch for years and years, always with a gap of space between them, each mustering the courage to close it.

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment with any thoughts, opinions, suggestions or advice. Con-crit is welcome as always.


End file.
